


Il respiro trattenuto

by JWAB



Category: Call Me By Your Name (2017), Call Me By Your Name - All Media Types, Call Me by Your Name - André Aciman
Genre: Angst, M/M, More like face love-making, Oliver's POV, face fucking
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-06-27
Updated: 2018-06-27
Packaged: 2019-05-29 12:02:50
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: Underage
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,834
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/15072749
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/JWAB/pseuds/JWAB
Summary: Their last night together in Rome.“We’ve still got hours.”“Hours,” Oliver repeated. So little, when he wanted decades. When other people got a lifetime.





	Il respiro trattenuto

Their last night together, Oliver and Elio fell into bed and made love drunk and sloppy and easy.

Elio fell asleep not long afterward. Oliver couldn’t. He lay awake watching the rise and fall of Elio’s belly and felt the dizzy buzz of too many glasses of wine slowly seep away, until he was bare, until the horror of leaving in mere hours took over in the pit of his stomach.

He would not be able to leave. The train would come and then it would go, and he would still be on the platform. He would clutch Elio’s hand, or a bench in the waiting room, or the bed frame right here, and he would refuse to go. He would stay another day. Then another week, he knew himself too well to think he could leave after one more week with him, and then school would start without him and still he’d stay. He’d stay a semester, a year. And eventually he would give up his doctorate, his teaching career, his citizenship if he had to and he would stay right fucking here in Italy.

He would write books and learn to eat soft boiled eggs and he would make love to Elio every single night until the day he died. He could find a teaching job here, he could teach English and philosophy here, why not? Here in Italy, by Elio’s side.

That is what he would do.

He would do that and maybe Elio’s parents would understand. They seemed to have an inkling and welcomed him anyway. Good, they’d have their blessing, probably, and no one else would ever need to know. They’d be friends out in the world and behind their closed front door they would be lovers.

That would be enough. It would have to be.

And ‘Professore’ would be just as good – better! – than ‘Professor.’ He’d be fluent in Italian soon enough, and he could be happy here. Respected. He could make a life. Buy a house. Surround himself with friends. His friends, and Elio’s. And.

And he would never have a child. Neither would Elio. And they could never marry.

And their love would be this fragile thing that could never be exposed to the light.

Hard to imagine them, _this_ , could ever be fragile. To Oliver, it was monumental.

And eventually he would shed the nauseous shiver of embarrassment when he watched from outside himself, the spike of shame when he thought of his father, what he would say if he knew, wouldn’t he? Eventually, the shame would dissipate as surely as this evening’s last wisps of drunken joy. It would have to.

He stood up slowly, felt the still night air settle on his skin. The night’s heavy silence drew him to the open window.

Rome.

_You stay here, la mia Italia, and keep my love safe. Protect this perfect summer. Keep it from harm. Envelop Elio in the smell of fruit trees and warm grass. Paths that great men trod, rise up to make his way easy._

_While I am away from him._

His throat was tight. Tears welled up, hot, inevitable. He let them fall, and stood in the night air, on their small balcony in their small room in Rome, and tried on a future without Elio like he might try on a shirt.

Could it fit him?

It wouldn’t be a life.

So, something in between.

Elio turned over in the bed. _Don’t wake up, don’t feel the way I feel now. Don’t remember me this way._ Oliver sat himself gently on the edge of the bed beside Elio, ready to comfort him back to sleep, but there was no need. Elio was still sleeping, his curls a halo around his head, his cheek flushed. Warm and safe.

Safe, in this held breath before tomorrow.

And that is what Oliver would do. He would hold his breath. Just until he saw Elio again.

The rest of the world would rush by, and he would let it, and he would hold his breath, _this_ breath, until his next day with Elio. Until the next time they’re warm and safe together.

Elio might, too, or maybe not. It didn’t matter. For Oliver, his love for Elio would be an eternally held breath, a suspended moment. A sacred place.

Elio’s fingers flexed against Oliver’s leg, under the sheet. He twisted onto his side and his eyelids fluttered open. “You okay?” he muttered, stretching a little.

Oliver turned to him, but he couldn’t speak. He couldn’t exhale.

“Hey,” Elio whispered. “Come ‘ere.” He slid toward the middle to make room and held the sheet up in invitation.

Oliver climbed in and lay down on his side to face him.

Elio settled his warm palm on Oliver’s wet cheek. “No, no, no, don’t.”

“I know,” Oliver said, wiping his eyes.

“It’s okay, we’re together. I promised you _I_ wouldn’t and now look at you.”

“I know. It just.”

“We’ve still got _hours_.”

“Hours,” Oliver repeated. So little, when he wanted decades. When other people got a lifetime.

“Be with me until then. Right here.” Elio pressed his palm first to his own sternum, then to Oliver’s.

Oliver lay back flat but kept his eyes locked with Elio’s, and Elio feathered his fingers over Oliver’s chest, let his fingertips drag over Oliver’s skin.

“You’re here,” Elio murmured, as he traced along Oliver’s ribcage, over Oliver’s trembling concave expanse of belly. He traced Oliver’s navel and smiled. “And I’m here.”

“You’re here,” Oliver sighed, and stroked his fingers over Elio’s. “I love your hands.”

Elio’s breath caught. It wasn’t a word they said. But then, this night was different in so many ways.

Oliver hooked a finger under Elio’s chin and drew it closer. “I love your sharp chin.” He kissed it gently, sucked at it until Elio dipped his chin and offered his mouth. Oliver sucked at that, too. “I love your mouth,” Oliver said and then, between kisses, “I love the way you taste.”

Elio groaned into another kiss.

Oliver pulled Elio on top of him, just an easy nudge and Elio came willingly, shifting his slightness onto Oliver’s chest, into the cradle of his hips, giving himself to Oliver’s mouth, increasingly voracious as he kissed over Elio’s jaw, into the skin under it, and down the sensitive length of Elio’s neck.

“I love your neck.” He tilted Elio’s head back. Elio offered no resistance. “I love the way it _bends_.” He licked a trembling line from Elio’s collarbone to his jaw.

Oliver mouthed over Elio’s collarbone, sucking a kiss into the sweet hollow at the base of his neck, and lower, so that Elio had to shift up to give Oliver access.

Oliver clutched at the _now_ of Elio even as he projected decades into the future, when Elio’s chest would be more filled out, strewn with hair, defined muscles in his shoulders when he pushed himself up, like he was doing now, hovering over Oliver’s face. Oliver pressed into Elio’s belly, kissed him with his whole face, and willed the impression of it to stay.

Elio was hard as stone and beginning to curl his hips in a slow rhythm against Oliver’s chest. Oliver pulled him easily up even more until Elio knelt on either side of Oliver’s face, bracing his hands on the headboard above them. Oliver cradled Elio there in front of him. “And this. I _love_ this,” Oliver crooned low.

Elio let out a thick, sighing groan as Oliver caught the tip of his cock between his lips. Eyes utterly full, Oliver held Elio’s as he slowly pushed Elio deeper and deeper into his mouth.

“I don’t want to hurt you,” Elio rasped in protest, pulling his hips back a little.

Oliver’s mouth was too full to answer; he all but slammed Elio down his throat, clutching him by the hips. It was deep and difficult and he couldn’t breathe. A tear escaped the corner of Oliver’s eye but he wanted it, he loved it, he needed it.

“Okay,” Elio whispered, gently easing back. “Okay. You love this.”

Oliver groaned his agreement and, more softly this time, drew Elio’s cock inside his mouth.

Elio leaned his forehead against the wall. “ _I_ love this.”

Oliver cradled Elio’s cock with his tongue, sucked it, came up to meet the thrusts he initiated with his own strength, Elio’s hips under his control, one strong hand on each. Elio whimpered and Oliver sucked harder.

Elio came quickly, too quickly to warn Oliver but Oliver loved that, too. He eased Elio through it, sucking gently through wave after wave, pulling him in, opening for thrusts that Elio couldn’t hold back. Had they ever been this close before?

Was it enough to last him?

“I’m sorry,” Elio began to murmur, rolling off to Oliver’s side.

“No, no, no,” Oliver protested, pulling him back on top of him, hips on hips now. “You were perfect.”

Oliver was so hard under Elio’s thigh. And with Elio softening against him, his body wilting over Oliver’s chest, wanting to suck Elio’s cock and wanting to fuck him were two sides of the same perfect thing.

“Let me,” he started, fingers skating feather-light over Elio’s hole. “Can you?”

Oliver could feel Elio grin against his neck. Elio stretched to nibble Oliver’s ear, then whisper, “I love how you fuck me.”

It was so much goodness, such an enormous feeling of good and love and need that Oliver thought he understood how someone could die of sex, because his heart was searingly hot in his chest with those words, with having him, with the sight of Elio reaching for their little jar of lube. Oliver mouthed the words he had almost said a hundred times before tonight, and a hundred more times tonight, while Elio watched himself slick Oliver’s cock in long, unbearable strokes. Still so sensitive and yet Elio withheld nothing, he held Oliver’s cock at his hole and worked himself in small thrusts down and down and down.

Ready, Elio looked up at Oliver’s face. Oliver didn’t close his eyes, didn’t drift to the future, but stayed right there in their bed in Rome, the night before leaving, as Elio rode him, curling his hips to capture Oliver again and again, slowly, unerringly. Adoringly. Elio nodded as if to say, “this is me, this is the deepest part of me and it’s yours,” and Oliver nodded back as if to answer him, “I have never been more myself than now, with you, inside you,” and beyond that there couldn’t be words, just the language of bodies and breath.

Oliver’s fingers dug into Elio’s hips when he came, and Elio bent forward, capturing every helpless grunt with his hungry mouth.

Neither wanted to move after. Elio fell asleep molded to Oliver’s side, his breath and Oliver’s cycling deep and easy. And maybe it was their breath, together, even as the roar of dread threatened Oliver’s peace, that finally lulled Oliver to sleep.

 

 

 

 

 

**Author's Note:**

> I was thinking about how Oliver was born in the 1950s -- the 1950s! The same decade as my parents, who were none too pleased about their teenage daughter going to San Francisco Pride parades in the late 1980s, I can tell you. They've come around now, but it puts Oliver's shame into perspective that's (happily) easy to forget nowadays.


End file.
